Writing to write
...and we'll see what wants to be written!
One never knows what wants to come up out of the Pleroma, the source of all that appears to be and into which everything that seems to have emerged returns. So we go onward into the future. Eris abides.
I have come back to the bunker and had what passes for lunch after breakfasting at Daily Provisions which will see seven hours of my time on Saturday through Wednesday next week as I train to be a part of the “Front of the House” staff. I’ve never done this kind of work before, but it seems straight forward and I’m grateful for the opportunity. It’s a chance to serve and be among people. I enjoy that kind of thing.
Back years ago, I used to work in front of the public in Colonial Williamsburg. I was an apprentice in the Geddy Foundry between 1986 and 1991. I left and took a position at the Gunsmith Shop for a few months before moving behind the scenes as a Conservation Technician, a position that I left in May of 1994 as I prepared to return to school to get my Master’s degree in German at the University of Pittsburgh. First, I went off to the Goethe Institut at Prien am Chiemsee in Bavaria. It was a great place to spend my time as I nursed my wounded heart.
In January 1994, my then-wife had decided to let me know that she was thinking of divorcing me to take up again with her high-school boyfriend. I knew that they had gotten back in touch but had not been worried, thinking that our commitment to each other meant more than it ended up meaning. It wasn’t an easy decision but she made it and in April, she’d come down to take half of our shared possessions and the healthy cat. I was left with a dying one who I’d have to have put down not long after as her kidneys had failed.
Having put my ex-wife through school to complete her certification to teach art, I had been applying to schools to go back to get my Master’s degree as had been our plan, and just because she was bailing out of the marriage, this didn’t mean that I had to end that trajectory. I was accepted at every school to which I applied but only Pitt offered a “full ride” so that is where I went. It took me a little longer than the two year program to complete my studies, in part because I nearly died of pneumonia 30 years ago this month. All things tend to the greater good, I find. In fact, I was talking about this principle of “pronoia” with my friend, Sophy Burnham, just a few days ago:
One thing is certain, if I hadn’t have had the experience I have, I wouldn’t have been here to amplify this lovely human being’s voice - or any other. If there is one thing that I am doing to serve the Pleroma, it is that; amplifying the voices of others so that they might be heard by those who might need to hear them. It’s just another service I provide!
This takes me in so many directions but writing is relatively linear, so let’s see where I end up.
Service: that’s the thing. We are all here to serve others. Mastery through servitude was a motto used by Meher Baba, who I follow. I don’t know if he was or wasn’t the avatar of the Monad as I believe he seems to have claimed to be. I do know that much of what he had to say seems consistent with my own understanding of what it would mean if there was such a “one” who was the source of all and to whom we will return.
It’s comforting, I suppose. Particularly as we thrown into this world. A friend recently posted a quotation from Blaise Pascal:
“When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.”
― Blaise Pascal
…and yet, we are not driven to despair. Instead, we are awakened to the enormity of the miraculous fact of our presence here and now. I, for one, feel it is an honor and a privilege to be here and have an opportunity to participate in the game of life with all of you.
I suppose that I could write more about this, but I have come to the understanding that fewer words are better, even as I spent nearly two hours talking just now with my friend, Ian Reclusado (The Kind Knife):
I do love to amplify the signal of others into cyberspace. I have no idea how long these little missives will last but the intent is to send them out toward the minds of others.
Onward!
"I believe everything moves toward the common good" — you wrote it in passing, between pneumonia and a foundry, and that's exactly why it lands. Not as belief. As something that survived. What does it mean to carry that without making it a sermon?